Jennifer Marshall is an Australian painter/printmaker based at Venus Bay in Regional Victoria and has recently established the Seaford Press in Brunswick, Melbourne. Originally from Adelaide, she has been a professional artist for over 40 years, having first exhibited at Bonython’s Gallery in 1962.
The artist studied Printmaking at the S.A. School of Art under the inspirational artists Karin Scheppers and Udo Sellbach, who first introduced her to the prints of Picasso and the German Expressionists.
Since 1975 she has had 35 solo exhibitions and has participated in over 80 group shows throughout Australia, Europe and Japan. She was the inaugural winner of the Silk Cut Award for linocut and in 2005 the ANL Maritime Art Award with a chiaroscuro woodcut.
From 1977 to 1989 Marshall was Head of printmaking at Sydney College of the Arts. In 1989 she moved to Victoria and taught at R.M.I.T., Monash, Ballarat and LaTrobe Universities.
Since 1994 she has had a special connection to the Printmaking department at Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart, and has exhibited and worked with Tasmanian artists, Milan Milojevic and Barbie Kjar. As a result of annual pilgrimages to Tasmania her work increasingly demonstrates a pre-occupation with water and the sea, as depicted by shifting patterns of light and shadow. Seeking inspiration from carved figureheads in Maritime Museums and their earlier prototypes from Antiquity, she has studied floor mosaics, fountains and sculpture from ancient Roman terme with their representations of sea creatures both naturalistic and fantastic.
Jennifer Marshall is an artist whose practice as a printmaker has been governed both by the conventions of mark making, as dictated by the use of cutting and engraving tools, and by her equally important practice as a painter. Her imagery continues to explore “not-land”; representations of the sea, water, storm, shipwreck, fabulous sea monsters and sea wrack. She has lived and worked in Sydney, Hobart and Regional Victoria and has exhibited paintings, prints and artist’s books throughout Australia, Japan, France, Italy, Poland and the U.K., where her prints are included in the archive of the Glasgow Print Workshop. Marshall is represented in numerous private and public collections.
selection of relief prints and artist’s books 1977-2009 held in May/June 2009 is the artist’s 4th solo exhibition at grahame galleries + editions.